The SuperDARN Research Group at Virginia Tech collaborates with an international community of scientists and engineers to study the interactions of the Earth's magnetosphere and upper atmosphere with the space environment.

LAICE Nano-Satellite Project

A team led by Professor Gregory Earle is developing two payloads for a nano-satellite project to be launched in late 2015. The satellite will fly in low Earth orbit, and will focus on the detection of gravity wave signatures in the mesosphere, thermosphere, and ionosphere.

Heating the Space Environment

Virginia Tech researchers are involved in ionospheric modification experiments at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Facility (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska. Stimulated radiation from the ionosphere during heating by high power radio waves is utilized for diagnosing the space environment.

Welcome to Space @ Virginia Tech

2017 Virginia Tech RockSat-X Launch a Massive Success

The launch went off without a hitch almost exactly at 0530 this morning. I am incredibly pleased to report that the VT experiment was a massive success. We received thousands of packets from the payload at both the Mobile Ground Station and the Virginia Tech Ground Station. In addition to this we can confirm that the payload also received uplink commands from the VTGS 4.5m Dish antenna (First Official Transmission from the VTGS!). We had a minor anomaly in the reception of one type of target emitter, but other than that (and the ridiculous amount of mosquitoes), we were very pleased with the launch and the results, read more.

Congratulations to Dr. Scott Bailey and his team on a successful sounding rocket launch at Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska. The launch can be viewed around the 38 minute mark in the embedded video above.

The NASA sounding rocket, Polar Night Nitric Oxide (PolarNox) was successfully launched on January 26. The mission was led by Dr. Scott Bailey of Space@VT with the support of Dr. Justin Carstens, Karthik Venkataramani, Stephen Noel, Dr. Brentha Thurairajah, and several others. A key collaborator and designer of the instrument is Dr. William McClintock of the University of Colorado.

Nitric oxide plays an important role in upper atmospheric dynamics, but its abundance in the the polar regions under prolonged nighttime conditions is not well known. The PolarNOx experiment was proposed as the first direct measurement of nitric oxide densities in the polar night. By looking at a star through the Earth's atmosphere and measuring attenuation of the starlight at specific wavelengths, we can infer the amount of nitric oxide present in the atmosphere. This technique is known as stellar occultation, and was achieved in the PolarNOx payload by using a Cassegrain telescope which collected the starlight, and a spectrograph assembly which produced the required spectrum.

Space@VT Welcomes Dr. Scott England

Dr Scott England is an Associate Professor in the Aerospace and Ocean Engineering Department. His research focuses on the interactions between planetary atmospheres and the space environment. He is the Project Scientist for NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), a co-Investigator on NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission of opportunity and a Participating Scientist on NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission.

RockSat-X launched early Wednesday, August 17, 2016 and carried a payload designed by Virginia Tech students. The payload experiment was a great success, sending data from 153km over the Atlantic Ocean all the way back to the Virginia Tech Ground Station (VTGS). More info coming soon.

GOLD will be the first NASA science mission to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite. Photo credit: NASA.

Two new NASA missions are teaming up to explore the boundary between Earth and space.

Set to launch Jan. 25 from French Guiana, the GOLD mission will be the first NASA science mission to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite. The mission will provide unprecedented imaging of the Earth’s upper atmosphere from geostationary orbit, read more.

Most of us learn by using our eyes. Whether it’s reading or poring over formulas, graphs and charts, it’s a mostly visual experience. Now, professors at Virginia Tech are exploring a new way to add another dimension to teaching and learning by transforming data into sound, read more.

The Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI) is working with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) to test components of student satellites bound for orbit. The Institute’s proton beam, which offers cutting edge cancer treatments, is being used to simulate the impact of radiation encountered in the space environment on space hardware developed by the students, read more.

The Total Solar Eclipse: Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity

On Aug. 21, the moon will move in front of the sun, dissolving daylight into night for mere moments. For the first time in 99 years, a total solar eclipse will cross the entire country from the Pacific to the Atlantic, giving scientists and engineers a chance to conduct research on systems we rely on for communication, safety, and even transportation, read more.

Eclipse Hunters: Space @ VT team readying for eclipse

Teams from Virginia Tech and Radford University have been readying for a while for what will be a few moments of prime research time on Aug. 21.

That’s the day of the first total solar eclipse visible from the United States since 1979, read more.

Dr. Mark Psiaki named American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Fellow

Space @ VT's Mark Psiaki, the Kevin Crofton Faculty Chair of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, was recently selected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the world’s largest aerospace professional society, read more.